Discoveries from Cuba World Cinema

Two Cuban ex-combatants wander in their memories while the scenario of their lives transmutes between reality and the fictions that accompany them.

Fascinated tourists stroll through the GDR museum as if it were an amusement park, indifferent to the painful stories that occurred under the communist regime. Their casual attraction to vintage, their comfortable forgetfulness and their need for utopia make them complicit in the current Cuban reality.

When you are married for 50 years you look back on life rather than look forward to it. However when this couple with an empty nest have a desire to see their grand daughter it sparks new life into their daily routine.

In November 2020, rapper Denis Solís was kidnapped by the Cuban National Revolutionary Police. After a shortened trial, he was sentenced to eight months in prison for alleged contempt of court. Following these events, a group of activists barricaded themselves in the headquarters of the independent cultural organization San Isidro, to which the musician belonged. Demanding the release of Solís, as well as other Cubans in prison, some people started a hunger strike.

In a dystopian context, a woman relives a painful event, trying to resolve it.

A queer operatic tale, between a singer and the sea. A dressed voice sings the remembrances of a lost love. The voice emerges from a shared body between the sea and the theater. The actor and character blend in a tormented evocation.

A commentary on fossil fuels and climate change

Neri, a female researcher, works to find ways to improve the soil during a crisis that plagues papaya crops, which in turn affects the land. Using organic fertilisers such as her menstrual blood, Neri embarks on a journey of self-doubt and re-connection with herself, and with her mother, and explores the wisdom of the moon and plants to germinate, grow and harvest the fruits of the papaya plant.

A young man reflects on his evangelical past imposed by his father when he begins to frequent an Adventist church in Cuba. The young man's existential resonances have repercussions on the fragile reality that this film essay attempts to construct.

The author establishes a communication with his cancer-sick mother through text messages. During his stay in the island the author works on an research for a possible documentary, he is impacted by a series of places, displacements and intimate situations that remind him of the path of his own self.

A short film that explores the lives and work of a Cuban lesbian couple who are hip hop singers and performers. The duo Krudas addresses issues such as women’s liberation, lesbian rights, female solidarity, and racism. Their work is deeply engaged with feminism and strong ties to their African roots.

A man released from prison seeks to recover his old friends and lost love, while threatened by his victim’s brother whom he killed involuntarily. This film tells the story of four friends, inseparable since childhood, in the Casablanca district of old Havana. Their friendship will be battered by difficult trials, but the tragedy will only strengthen their bond: after all, they are like brothers. A dramatic comedy that shows us with splendor the young people and Cuba of today. Five years in the making, this Cuban story is about camaraderie, friendship, and the human being who lives daily in a reality that conditions him, but does not determine him.

An illustration of the difficulties women encounter when they seek to achieve economic integration and equality with men in a country at the height of revolution.

1:34, 2012, Cuba.

Desire peaks and thoughts race as a man watches as another man swims naked in a pool.

First all-independent cuban animated show.

An anti-war story.

Animated short film from Elpidio Valdés' series. General Resoplez is leading a convoy, Coronel Elpidio Valdés decide to strike back. His plan doesn't work as expected, though.

Portrait of Cuban revolutionary intellectual Antonio Guiteras. Political events in Cuba from the end of General Gerardo Machado's dictatorship in 1933 to the death of the revolutionary, who was assassinated in El Morrillo in 1935.

“I navigate the memory of Cuba. Without maps, without compass, with a camera.” With these words, Marcos Pimentel begins his film, a second-year assignment at the Cuban film academy EICTV.

A masterclass in mood, the film plunges us into the darkness of the blackouts that ripple across Cuba. In the murk of shadow, the flickering of fire beckons stories from realms beyond the reach of light. Electricity cuts have revived a protest movement dormant since the revolution, one demanding that power be restored.

Aniversario by Ernesto Domecq Menéndez, 2:57, 2014, Cuba.

A humorous glimpse into Cubans’ sense of style.

On a Caribbean island, half a century ago, a revolution created a new frontier beyond which, little by little, the outside world became vaporous, invisible, forbidden. Now, three old men, Luis, Carmelo, and Ernesto, let their imaginations wander. All around them busses full of tourists, ambassadors of a never-never land, come and go, triggering in the old men a deep longing for vanished ideals; love, time and the places they have never seen.

Captured entirely on phone footage, a group of Cuban artists risk everything to document their uprising against a government trying to silence them.

Inside a black hole, rapid movements fill the void. Macroscopic corporal landscapes follow one after the other to percussion in crescendo. White skin pulsates serenely and black skin wiggles, showing a face. Bright discharges explode in the air. In a slow, swaying trance, a shining eyelid reveals and then hides a liquid eye. The swelling and contracting skin of an abdomen makes deep sounds to an unrelenting beat.

Record of the pilgrimage to the sanctuary of San Lázaro on December 17, 1994, during one of the deepest moments of economic and social crisis in the country.

In a colonial house in the center of Havana, Malelo lives alone after having cared for María Antonia for decades, a neighbor from a pre-revolutionary bourgeois background with no descendants. While he tries to legalize the inheritance of the house, he turns it into a refuge for his neighbors who, like him, endure the struggles of daily life by staying together.

Animated short film from Elpidio Valdés' series. General Resoplez´s men are in summer campaign, ready to defeat Coronel Elpidio Valdés. But he has a plan.

Animated short film from Elpidio Valdés' series. Coronel Elpidio Valdés and a few oh his men try to escape from a spanish cañonera, leaded by Don Cetáceo.

Animated short film from Elpidio Valdés' series. After Coronel Elpidio Valdés is severely injured in a battle, General Resoplez hire some rayadillos to finish the work.

Animated short film from Elpidio Valdés' series. Coronel Andaluz tells General Resoplez he has a plan to catch Elpidio Valdés, who's hidden near. Meanwhile, María Silvia and the mambises try to attack a town controled by Resoplez's men.

A solitary man lives a measured and almost ritualistic life on his quiet farm, until a young couple, stranded by a broken-down motorbike, knock at his door and shift the stillness of his world.

Real images and superimposed drawings create a synthesis full of vibrant suggestions about the absurd, complex, and beautiful aspects of our planet.

Life is Dance follows the stories of six main protagonists, across three generations. Ordinary Cubans with one thing in common, their passion for dance. Marta and Félix are nostalgic for the dance halls of old, but still dance whenever they can. Damaris and Gusmel are leaders of a small-town dance group, it means everything to them to win the annual dance competition. Teenagers Lachy and Dayan would love to be professional dancers, if only they could stick to reggaeton and not have to learn the “old people’s dances” Full of colour and music, disappointment and joy, we join these charismatic characters on their journey through a changing Cuba.

A journey in search of the surreal across the island of Cuba. "The premise was very specific: we had to produce a documentary entitled Los cubanos (The Cubans)." These words open the documentary Los cubanos (The Cubans) or Breton es un bebé (Breton is a Baby), which recounts my pilgrimage, my journey through the interior of my country, the most important trip I have ever taken in my life.

The life and work of Cayita Araújo, teacher of revolutionaries, who has devoted her intelligence and courage to the struggle for the cause of the Cuban people.

Analysis of the Republic, from the end of the War of Independence to the beginning of the insurrection against the dictatorship of General Fulgencio Batista.

A dystopic short film set in a place where a poet confronts an interrogation by an enigmatic official after poetry is banned. Through visual metaphor, the film explores creative freedom under repression.

Mambí Elpidio Valdés rescues his horse Palmiche captured by the Spaniards.

What entertains children and allows them to dream in a small Cuban town? A roller skating coach from San Pablo de Yao, a small town in the Sierra Maestra, Cuba, leaves his house in his daily routine, crosses the river, and teaches skating classes. He returns home, carrying all the love of the city of San Pablo de Yao. However, his work is fraught with conflicts that mark his work and the children's education. The streets of San Pablo de Yao allow this sport to exist in the city, but the river poses a threat during periods of constant rain, causing training to be suspended for several days, either because it prevents Chepe from crossing the river and reaching the town, or because the streets are wet.

Ana wants to go hunting but her older sister and her grandfather do not allow her. Ana is haunted by her nightmares but what is more troubling are the secrets lurking home.

Aspects of the life of the revolutionary combatants Lidia Doce and Clodomira Acosta, guerrilla supplies and messengers in the Sierra Maestra, until their capture, torture and death.

A humorous depiction of the consequences of arriving late to work.

Bebé returns to Havana after 10 years away. During that time, he saw the city depicted in a reel, a social media post, a video by influencers. This film is the unvarnished portrait that revealed itself to him upon his return.